Author: Yurii Sheliazhenko, PhD (World BEYOND War).
In this game, you represent people making choices in pursuit of a more peaceful and happy life in the world.
Click an option to jump to the results of your choice.
Choose wisely! Please don’t turn our planet into a more hellish hell than it appears to be today.
The wrong choice could be disastrous, or could return you to a question you’ve seen before, so that you can attempt a better answer.
Good luck, and enjoy.
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Military expenditure in the world is rising, wars are escalating. There is a high threat of nuclear war.
What do you do?
- Preventive nuclear attack to destroy evil warmongers
- Negotiations behind closed doors among nuclear powers to agree on restraint for the survival of humankind
- A strike of nuclear scientists refusing to maintain immoral weapons that are able to kill all life on the planet
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After a nuclear attack and retaliation, life and civilization on Earth have ended in a nuclear apocalypse.
Game over. You lose. Everyone loses. Countless lives are lost.
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Negotiations behind closed doors among nuclear powers to agree on restraint for the survival of humankind
Your choice?
- Conclude a non-proliferation treaty
- Conclude a treaty on the abolition of nuclear weapons
- Quit all this useless talk and take “real action”
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Despite nuclear weapons having been abolished, every nation and alliance of nations arms itself against threats from enemies, fears that enemies are also arming themselves, and seeks to defeat enemies. Wars erupt, with every party in armed conflict claiming to be acting in self-defense against an enemy’s aggression.
Your choice?
- Peace through strength! Seek the ultimate powerful solution to deal with the enemies
- Peace through diplomacy: seek the peaceful solution at the negotiating table
- Peace through nonviolent action: mobilize the people of our one common planet to resist peacefully any aggression and occupation, all wars and militarism — to resist the power of violence through civil disobedience
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Parties to armed conflicts are invited to meet for peace talks hosted by impartial facilitators.
Your choice?
- Third parties and representatives from around the world are included in peace talks, making them an inclusive colloquy seeking agreements about a future common life in peace
- Rival governments agree on a ceasefire and further discuss the modus vivendi, i.e. ways to coexist
- It is fruitless to talk with evil enemies, better to talk with allies and seek a powerful way to defeat evil
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Popular nonviolent resistance to all violence, domestic and foreign, is perceived by governments as an existential threat to national security, because it disrupts governance and is perceived as a benefit to enemies or to an enemy conspiracy. A state of emergency is declared. A military dictatorship is looming.
Your choice?
- The people have the power to overturn the evil government and elect a better one, but this is an internal affair of the nation, and any attempts by suspicious foreigners to interfere will be forcefully stopped by the united will of the nation
- Refuse to kill, to be conscripted, or to pay war taxes; declare any violent governance illegitimate and subject to civil disobedience
- Mobilize patriots in a democratic movement to protest against tyranny and repression
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The use of violence by governments is de-legitimized, but anarchy and disorder escalate, generating crime, distrust, and cruelty. Gangs run criminal empires, dividing people just as violent governments had done.
Your choice?
- Start global, popular, inclusive peace education programs, helping people to gain the practical skills for nonviolent action
- Allow a free press, referenda, elections, and the invisible hand of the market to restore balance and order
- The good guys must stick together and beat the bad guys
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Defending civil society against a government’s oppression, a democratic movement needs to choose a strategy.
Your choice?
- “Action,” not words, can topple dictators and defend the country from invaders
- The government will do its job properly under democratic civilian control
- Prefer humankind to nation, Earth to country, talking to killing, thinking to hatred
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With popular awareness growing of how to practice a nonviolent way of life despite all sorts of challenges, nonviolent action is regularly misused for the manipulative exercise of power and the gaining of advantages in a geopolitical competition.
Your choice?
- Diversity and independence of nonviolent movements will ensure that manipulators are marginalized and genuine pacifists prevail
- Weaponization of nonviolent action should be punished
- A worldwide nonviolent movement needs to discuss centralization and discipline, in order to finish the peaceful transformation of the global polity
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In self-organizing to live in peace, after big changes in the old violent order have begun, the people need to choose a strategy.
Your choice?
- The knowledge-based choice needs to take into account the ineffectiveness of violence and the effective methods of nonviolent action
- People have a right to know from the media who and what threatens them and how to respond
- It is impossible to change the world for the better, but the smart people can stick together in peace and survive
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A vast decentralized ecosystem of nonviolent movements faces organized infiltration by hostile actors and abusive exploitation of public resources by free-riders.
Your choice?
- The gates of an open society must be closed to its enemies
- Actively discuss the strengthening of voluntary discipline, solidarity, and centralization
- In a competition of nonviolent movements, those strongest and best able to subordinate individuals to a common mission will survive
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A democratic dialogue on nonviolent world governance has been started. Nationalist sentiment is an obstacle to the needed transition towards transnational peace.
Your choice?
- The future constitution of the world government needs to be modeled after the most developed democratic country, a country powerful enough to lead the struggle for freedom and democracy
- Propose a vision of a common planet as one land, and all of humanity as one nation, a world community of diverse cultures and free people
- Promote sovereign equality, denazification, and multilateralism, ensuring that no countries and no international organizations, including the United Nations, will be allowed to meddle in the internal affairs of sovereign nations
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The most developed democratic country has decided to change the world for the better and to achieve a democratic peace worldwide.
Your choice?
- Lead by example: adopt a constitution of nonviolent rule of law, get rid of weapons and armed forces, institutionalise peaceful responses to all perceived threats to peace
- Crush by a swift victorious strike all the evil dictators endangering the free world
- Make borders and markets realistically open, ensure maximum domestic freedom with reasonable security safeguards, and incentivise the same transformations in other countries
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A constitution of nonviolent world government has been adopted. There are forces opposing the government, resorting to violence without hesitation.
Your choice?
- The rogue actors must be forced to behave
- It might be necessary to have a last war to end all wars, after which victorious allies will form the world government, something like the United Nations; after all, there is an old saying – if you want peace, prepare for war
- Omnipresent peace movements educate and mobilize civil societies to ensure compliance with the constitution of peace
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Many people, ready to deal with the forces threatening the constitution of the nonviolent world government, have decided to act.
Your choice?
- Start a global campaign of nonviolent action
- Compel the troublemakers to follow the rules, and punish the most intransigent ones by any means necessary
- Confront the troublemakers locally, using a variety of methods
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Large-scale nonviolent resistance, monitoring, and educational and anti-disinformation campaigns have safeguarded and developed the institutions of nonviolent governance, and helped the popular imagination to get rid of enemy images and delusions about the benefits of violence. Methods of nonviolent action are universally known and used to prevent escalation of common everyday incidents, and to restrain the influence of marginal groups of fans of violence and hatred that still exist, usually being, or pretending to be, nothing more than fringe games of historical reenactment. These groups remain a living lesson to the wider society about how you should not behave.
You have built a world where almost everyone refuses to kill and there are no wars. Game over. You win. Everyone wins. Congratulations!
- Now, let’s assume that the reconstructors of ancient barbarism have built a spaceship, colonized a planet far away from Earth, and — with time — multiplied into a new humankind waging wars for centuries. Play again?
- Or you can give us your thoughts about this game here.
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Created in 2025 by Yurii Sheliazhenko.